Residents of Gorantala village in Gambhiraopeta mandal of Rajanna-Sircilla district have passed a resolution urging the Government to restrict power supply to nine hours only to save natural resources.
Even as the State Government has announced 24x7 power supply for the farming sector from Monday in the undivided Karimnagar district, some farmers have been opposing the 24-hour supply.
Majority of farmers have fixed automatic starters to their agricultural connections, and the farmers fear that there was every possibility of wastage of power and depletion of groundwater table due to continuous running of the motor-pumps.
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There are similar requests to the electricity authorities from various other villages too about the continuation of the existing nine-hour power supply to the farm sector to save the power and water resources.
On the other hand majority of farmers, however, were removing the automatic starters attached to motor-pumps to save power.
Northern Power Distribution Company Limited (NPDCL) Superintending Engineer K. Madhava Rao said that they were getting requests for the continuation of old nine-hour power supply to the farm sector as the power would be wasted with the fixation of automatic starters to their pump-sets.
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“As it is a Government policy of providing 24-hour power supply, we cannot change to old system of nine-hour power supply. However, we have launched a campaign to educate the farmers to remove automatic starters and use the power whenever required for their farm activities”, he stated.
He said that the NPDCL authorities had visited the fields and removed the automatic starters to avoid wastage of power from Saturday onwards.
Official records state that there are more than 79,000 automatic starters fixed to motors, he said and added that they had removed 338 starters on the first day of the drive.
He hoped that following the special drive the farmers would voluntarily remove them.
He said that the power consumption in the area had increased from 11 million units per day to 15 million units per day with 24-hour power to the farm sector.